Central air conditioning has become virtually standard throughout the housing industry, as well as in industrial buildings. Over the years, a standard practice has been developed which uses three elements in the central unit. The first element is a fan for forced air circulation. The output of the fan is then passed through a heater containing a heating element, which allows the air to be heated. The third element is an air conditioning evaporator which, in combination with a condensor in a separate location, is capable of cooling the air. The heater and air conditioner evaporator are joined together, with the air plenums of the heater and air conditioning evaporator forming a portion of the output flow path from the fan.
The heating and ventilation industry contains many manufacturers, a large number of whom make only a heater or evaporator. As yet, no industry wide standards have been establish to control the configurations and dimensions of the heater and evaporator units produced by these manufacturers. Therefore, an adapter is often required to join the evaporator to the heater to support the evaporator and also connect the plenums of the two devices. However, because of the wide variation in units available in the industry, literally hundreds of dimensional combinations are possible and this fact has required the adapter to be virtually custom made for a given installation. This results in increased material and labor costs and can result in a poor connection between the units.
Therefore, a need exists for an adapter which may be employed for more than a single combination of a heater and evaporator which eliminates the need for a custom manufacture of the adapter for a particular application.